Jax Pavan

Jax Pavan is a Jedi Knight whose determination to recover Thi Xon Yimmon draws him into a pursuit of Darth Vader that tests both his loyalties and his sense of what a Jedi can still be. His story moves between disguises and open confrontations, grief and renewed purpose; its decisive turn is not simply his return from apparent death, but his eventual choice to carry on without surrendering to darkness.

Identity and Background

Jax is a human Jedi Knight and an ally of the resistance group Whiplash. By the time he resumes the search for Yimmon, his history with Vader has made the Sith Lord both a personal nemesis and a continuing strategic danger. Months have passed since their last confrontation, yet no HoloNet report, rumor from highly placed officials, or speculation in Coruscant’s underground has clarified Vader’s whereabouts or condition. His apparent disappearance leaves a silence where certainty should be.

That silence does not persuade Jax that Vader is dead. In their previous encounter, a drug that unpredictably enhanced Vader’s Force abilities drove him to lash out against Haninum Tyk Rhinann, who had pushed him toward the brink while attempting to assassinate him. The unleashed energy vaporized Rhinann, and both men fell a great distance. Rhinann died; Vader vanished. The distinction matters to Jax: the encounter has ended, but it has not given him proof that his enemy is gone. His restraint when Den Dhur voices the possibility that Vader is watching them sits against this private refusal to mistake absence for safety.

The Pursuit of Yimmon

After deciding that there was no reason to continue to Dantooine, Jax chose to return to Coruscant, regroup, and find a way to recover Yimmon. Degan Cor offered him another path: work from Toprawa, where the resistance was quietly building a fleet beneath the Empire’s strategic presence, and command a wing of fighters. The offer promised a larger part in the coming struggle, but Jax’s immediate priority remained the captive Whiplash leader. Later, when I-Five found substantial Imperial payments flowing to concealed accounts on Mandalore, Jax agreed that bounty hunters were a likely explanation. The possibility that Darth Vader was recruiting them to hunt Jedi was alarming; it also implied that Vader believed surviving Jedi remained to be found.

Jax’s search repeatedly required him to turn identity into a tool. With only five hours to act after learning that the ship was holding, he decided to go to the Palace District and get close to Darth Vader’s vessel, reasoning that Vader might have brought Yimmon to Coruscant and could be transferring him to the Inquisitors. In the gallery, Jax used the cover of two holograms and a bronze sculpture to evade surveillance cameras, then changed out of his police-lieutenant uniform and into a long, hooded robe. The diplomatic pouch disappeared beneath it; Pel Kwinn gave way to the appearance of an Inquisitor entering Flight Control. The disguise let him move through an Imperial space where an openly identified Jedi would have been exposed at once.

On Mandalore, he adopted a more elaborate cover. In Keldabe, Jax dressed as a hard-edged mercenary, with a blaster, lightweight body armor, bound-back hair, a contact lens that made his right eye look cybernetic, and a scar crossing his eyelid. The appearance was only the surface of the deception: he also became Corran Vigil, a precious-contraband dealer on the fringes of society. I-Five had prepared a buried record portraying Vigil as both a smuggler and a ruthless procurer of scarce goods; its obscurity could pass as evidence that he was hiding his disreputable life. Jax sent I-Five and Den Dhur to investigate possible Imperial activity on Mandalore or Concordia, while he went alone to the Oyu’baat, an old Keldabe tapcaf where Black Sun operatives might conduct business. His choice to seek information there extended the hunt beyond Imperial channels, but also brought him closer to the criminal power he would have to negotiate with.

Jax’s objective remained precise even as his methods grew more compromising: he wanted Yimmon recovered alive and intact. He believed Yimmon’s discipline and ability to guide his thoughts might help him withstand Darth Vader’s interrogation, but did not mistake those qualities for a guarantee. When I-Five proposed returning to Toprawa for help from the Rangers rather than relying on Black Sun, Jax acknowledged the alternative while continuing to pursue the route that might bring him to Vader and the prisoner. Xizor challenged the story Jax had used as subterfuge and demanded his true agenda. Jax did not disclose more than that Vader possessed something he wanted; still, he pressed Xizor to create a diversion that would draw Vader back to Coruscant and interrupt his progress with Yimmon. The arrangement was a calculated use of Black Sun’s resources, not an expression of trust.

That calculation carried a personal cost. Jax recognized that he lacked a Jedi Master, Laranth, and the experience to face Darth Vader on equal terms; in their previous encounter, he had survived only with substantial help and because Vader overreached while Haninum Tyk Rhinann sacrificed himself. He disliked placing himself in the service of a Black Sun Vigo, but treated Xizor’s support as the option available to him. At the same time, the mission threatened to draw Whiplash’s fate into the same chain of events: Jax learned that Acer Ash belonged to the group and that Tuden Sal was proceeding with a plan to assassinate Palpatine. When Jax later learned that Yimmon knew the resistance cells on both Toprawa and Dantooine, the urgency sharpened. If Darth Vader broke him, the danger would reach beyond one prisoner; Jax insisted that Yimmon had to be taken off Kantaros Station.

The Holocron and the Return

At the Star Temple ruins on Dathomir, Jax pursued knowledge through Darth Ramage’s Sith Holocron, an artifact whose layered construction had resisted ordinary handling. I-Five had described how Yanth, the Hutt crime lord, manipulated its outer plates to expose information in their electron lattices, but the deeper levels seemed to require a catalyst. Jax approached it through the Force, tracing its etched ideograms and concentrating his senses on the artifact. The mechanism yielded suddenly: a panel slid open, another folded back, and a holoprojection of alphanumerics and complex formulas rose into the air. A drop of blood from Jax’s wounded palm struck the Holocron’s crown and ran down its incised face, linking the opening of its hidden knowledge to a bodily cost as well as to his Force focus.

The knowledge did not arrive as a simple answer. Jax thanked Magash Drashi for accompanying him to the Infinity Plain, helping him draw knowledge from the Holocron, standing by him, and befriending him. In meditation, he pictured himself at the hub of a great wheel, with separate bodies of knowledge at the ends of its spokes: understanding would depend on connecting them. The relation between Force projections and time seemed clear by comparison, but Darth Ramage’s research into time manipulation initially remained impenetrable. Jax recast the problem as islands floating in an ocean of time and imagined tides and currents moving them, their patterns unfolding like fractals. The image gave shape to his work without making the underlying problem easy; his task was to connect fragments whose relation he could glimpse but not yet master.

Elsewhere, Probus Tesla considered whether the way a mind absorbed physical and psychic shocks could be used against Jax. Contact with him had disturbed Tesla, who admitted as much to Darth Vader after recognizing the source of his discomfort. When Tesla later faced the intruders, the indigo robes were gone, revealing Jax himself. Tesla could not reconcile the sight with his expectation that Jax was dead; Jax answered that assumption by confirming he was alive. The revelation turns apparent death into a tactical and personal misreading: Jax had not vanished from the conflict, even if his condition and whereabouts had made him seem absent.

After the confrontation, Jax returned to his companions and declared that he was back for good. He directed Sacha Swiftbird to set a course for Dathomir, where Augwynne Djo had promised to relieve him of Darth Ramage’s dark knowledge. Trusting a Dathomiri Witch to restore balance to his mind was itself a risk, but the decision marked a change in how Jax approached the burden he had taken on: rather than treating the Holocron’s knowledge as a private achievement, he accepted help in containing its effects. His return therefore joined recovery to renewed commitment, while leaving open how much of the knowledge—and its danger—could be removed.

Grief, Resolve, and the Future

Jax’s commitment to recovering Yimmon unfolds alongside an absence he cannot repair. In the wreckage of the Far Ranger, Laranth fell from the weapons battery into his arms with shattered bones, a nearly severed lekku, and shrapnel lodged in her neck. Later, speaking to I-Five, Jax named her among the things he needed and no longer had. His confession set personal loss beside the mission’s other costs: he regretted having put Yimmon in danger, knew he lacked the training to face Vader alone, and nevertheless chose to use the resources available to him. His resolve is not presented as freedom from grief or doubt, but as action taken while both remain present.

The Holocron’s dark knowledge makes that struggle more than a question of physical survival. Jax returns to his companions and chooses to seek help from Augwynne Djo to restore balance to his mind; afterward, he describes continuing in whatever capacity remains possible, refusing both evil and surrender to darkness. He recognizes that the old Jedi Order has been swept away, but not that its possibility has ended: a new Order may rise from its ashes, whether or not he lives to help establish it. The ending gives Jax no assurance of personal victory or a settled future. Instead, it defines his return through a commitment that can outlast him: to keep resisting, and to leave open the way for the Jedi to begin again.